Friday, June 25, 2010

Who was the intriguing, androgynous blonde at Jean Paul Gaultier’s Spring/Summer 2011 menswear show in Paris overnight? Melbourne’s Andrej Pejic, that’s who. Frockwriter knew it would not be long before Pejic appeared on a major runway and there he is in three outfits at JPG. Update: Pejic reports that he will also be doing John Galliano's show today. Since first popping up on our radar at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week last year, as reported by frockwriter, Pejic shot a 14 page editorial for Australia’s RUSSH magazine and headed to London, where the 18 year-old was snapped up by Storm Management. Pejic, whose mother agency in Australia is Chadwicks, is now repped by New Madison in Paris and I Love Models Management in Milan and has shot for Dazed + Confused Japan (see below), London-based magazines Libertine and Wonderland and Martyn Bal. Stand by for what could be his biggest career break to date: editorial (including a cover try) just shot by a major international photographic duo for the September edition of a major international fashion title.

Pejic emerges on the international stage at a moment when androgyny has never been more topical - and not just in fashion.

Gaultier first proposed the idea of western men in skirts in the 1980s - two decades before Marc Jacobs began kitting himself out in his now signature kilt. Beyond Scotland, of course, men in several other cultures wear skirt-like garments.

On a far more serious note, last month at the inaugural TEDx Sydney summit, intersex rights activist Gina Wilson gave a moving presentation about the challenges and discrimination faced by the estimated 1.7percent of the population who are born defying traditional male/female sexual stereotypes.

And Australia's own Hollywood superstar, Nicole Kidman, is set to star in a film about Lili Elbe, née Einar Wegener, one of the first known recipients of male-to-female sex reassignment surgery. Not only is Kidman playing Elbe, she is also producing it. It's an interesting career choice for Kidman, who would undoubtedly be well aware of the longstanding urban myth that claims she was born a hermaphrodite.